


Delia

by Lillifred



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4188021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillifred/pseuds/Lillifred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Delia of Eldorne and things have gotten completely out of hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delia

**Author's Note:**

> Delia tells her own story.

July 439

 

My name is Delia of Eldorne and things have gotten completely out of hand.

 

As long as I’m still able to, I want to write some things down. If you somehow found these notes despite me planning to burn them: No, I do NOT want you to read them. No, this is NOT an account of the various affairs I’ve had. This is certainly NOT a detailed report about my sex life with prince Jonathan (somehow I’m convinced this is what most of you want to read about me, please prove me wrong).

 

This is about me. You know what? It’s fucking scary to write about me. Also, I’m scared to death because of other reasons right now (I’ll come back to that later).To being scared, I react by taking things not-so-seriously. So bear that in mind. Yes, my report will be funny (maybe even exaggerated – okay, it will be exaggerated). But that’s because I’m scared.

 

I shall start at the beginning.

 

Okay, it’s not the beginning. I have no fucking idea what the beginning is. Have you ever dared to write a story of the important events in your life and tried to find the beginning? Good luck with that. So, I just gonna start in my childhood.

 

My parents were very respectable noble-people (yes, were, I have a certain feeling that they will not be considered to be so respectable for much longer, but I’ll explain). Living in a palace of our own with our own court. My daddy even was a knight! Sometimes we had big festivities in our great hall. With wine (I wasn’t interested in that, I was a kid, remember? To be honest I never grew fond of wine and the likes to this day ~~and I fear there aren’t many more days to come~~ ), lots of food (I’ve always been a picky eater, so another thing that didn’t get me too excited), music and dancing (Oh, I loved to dance! Oddly enough my parents weren’t so fond of my childish freestyle variety of the whirlwind dance. Admittedly, I might have destroyed a vase or two), and there were bards. Like bards who tell stories! Yeah, you’re so convinced you know what kind of stories I liked. The stories about knights and ladies. The romantic ones. Well, that’s… not quite true. I did like stories about knights. And stories about knights and ladies I liked even more. But it had to be lady knights.

 

So now you know what got me to swoon. Not prince charming. Or knight-oh-so-handsome. It was lady knights courting ladies. Simple as that.

 

You know how you sometimes roll your eyes at old people telling stories about how the old times were so much better? I do that too. But there’s one point to be made in favour of the old times in Tortall: There’s been hella lots of lady knights. And they’ve kicked fucking ass.

 

And: They’ve licked the hell out of their ladies’ pussies.

 

So I was that cute girl (like I REALLY mean cute, cute as in I couldn’t walk two steps without getting sweets by someone (which I disliked because I didn’t like honey or almonds or dried fruits, I mean SERIOUSLY I was that weird) or even worse: getting petted on my head) who pressured every single one of her playfellows to play lady knights so that I could be the lady of a lady knight.

 

I also was that kid who could fall in a puddle while daydreaming about a fictitious or long-dead lady knight (true story, but I’m not going to elaborate on that one).

 

My only problem was that lady knights didn’t exist any longer (I WHISH that’d be my only problem now). Later I learned that one lady knight did exist. And that she wasn’t attracted to me. Shit happens.

 

Okay, she exists. And she isn’t attracted to me. That is the end of the story. Or it should be. But have you EVER experienced a girl in her teens or her early twenties having a hopeless unrequited crush? Of course it was hella important to me. And that is one of the stories I actually want to tell in here.

 

Yeah, that, and how I participated in a plot to destroy Tortall (that I kinda tried to prevent but now it’s too late and I lack abilities in that regard, sorry ~~and I trusted that people would be more intelligent but no~~ ). Go figure, Delia. You’re priorities are RANDOM. And I’m scared to death. But I’ve said that already.

 

Of course my parents had plans for me. Okay, one plan: That I should become the mistress of a king. And get him to give many shiny things to Eldorne. Not Roald (too old, too little talent at being a king, too much in love with Lianne). His successor. Should be an easy choice with him having only one son. Well, people tend to tell you all that blah-blah about divine dynasties, kings chosen by fate and everyone happily cheering at the son of a family who has ruled since the beginning of mankind or something like that. Don’t believe people. I’ve read history books. And I’ve listened to people who could tell the histories of those less fortunate. For real: who is to become a new king is decided by who finds a reason to declare a marriage void, who wages civil war (and wins, never EVER wage civil war if you can’t win, not a good idea, true story), and who gets their head chopped off first (there was a king who was king for only ten minutes, from the point when his precursor’s head was chopped off until someone chopped of his own pretty head).

 

So King Roald had a son, Jonathan. And a very ambitious nephew, Roger. The problem for Roger was that there was nothing exactly wrong with Jonathan (apart from being son to a father who would rather give away half of Tortall before he fought back). Too bad for Roger, that there were quite a few things wrong with himself. I’ll tell you about that.

 

Let’s get this straight: There were two people who had a realistic chance to get on the throne after Roald. My mission was to get in a relationship with both. Marry none of them. A mistress can easily have as much influence as a queen. And it’s easier for her to change sides if necessary.

 

Sounds easy enough for a person as charming (yes, if I’m not noting things down for myself I AM charming, it’s actually funny to think of someone who’ve never met me in person reading this – or someone who has, I bet some people are in for a surprise) as I am? Have you tried to get into a relationship with Roger? You haven’t. It’s not possible. Have you ever been read a poem written by Jon? I _hope_ you haven’t. Some things are horrible. Some things are more horrible. Jon’s poems belong to that ‘more horrible’ category.

 

You know what happened? I arrived in Corus. And every man at court went nuts for me. Except for Roger who is creepy. And for Alex. Who is gay as fuck. And creepy. Because who on earth could fall so hard for Roger. Seriously. I tried to seduce Jon. Yay, it worked! Success! I tried to seduce Roger. He told me that I should try and separate Jon and his squire if I wanted to be useful. I met lots of other young knights at court and I might have gotten just a little too much into flirting. It was easy and fun. And it helped my find out interesting information on just about anything. I don’t know why men are so into discussing matters of live and death in between sheets. They’d better stop or it’ll be more matters of death than life for some of them rather sooner than later. It was fun. And it was interesting. And it wasn’t good for my reputation, but if you’ve got someone to love you, they don’t care much about your reputation any longer, so I wasn’t too worried.

 

Then Jon introduced me to his squire. And my heart melted.

 

It’s completely beyond me how anyone could believe that Alanna was a boy for longer than two seconds. She did a good job at acting like a boy. But you could see that it was an act. She was trying a little too hard. In my opinion you could see that she didn’t want to be a boy. She did want to be a knight. And she was a knight (or a very knightly squire at that time)! I saw her knightly manners, her lively eyes, her red hair (I didn’t even know that I was attracted to red hair before that), the way she interacted with her cat. I was smitten.

 

You know, actually it was common knowledge which noble had how many children and if they were supposed to be boys or girls. I mean like, someone could have done some fact-checking! Just once! (It’s not that easy to find out if a person that age is a girl or boy just by asking their parents at all, and that’s another problem on its own, but at least you can find out if thir parents hink their kid is a boy or girl easily in most cases) (It’s good that no one did, because Alanna wouldn’t have been allowed to become a knight otherwise and that is totally what she should be, but I still think it’s scary that no one ever noticed that one of Lord Alan’s children was a girl) I guess the reason for that is that people only see what they want to see and clearly a girl going to be a knight was so fricking impossible, that just no one got their head around it.

 

When I asked her to dance with me, she acted as if I’d just offered her a cup of piss to drink (I tried to think myself into the idea that that was a sign of internalized biphobia, but I guess it was just plain old heterosexuality – or she doesn’t like me in particular, but to be honest, she’s never shown any interest in women, and for a certain time I was very aware of what she did when we were around each other).

 

So that was me successfully seducing someone I didn’t want to be in a relationship with (can we be fuckbuddies with no dynastic hidden agenda please, I would have liked that) and successfully falling hard for someone who didn’t feel the same way for me (fair enough) and actively hated me for being in a relationship with Jon. Oh, also I started hating on Jon a little after I found out that he was sooo into Alanna and that she reciprocated his feelings. It was horrible. Like, is there ANYTHING more horrible that can happen to you when you’re young than romance? (Yeah, I know that there is, but I do think I have a small point here.)

 

Finally Jon broke up with me BECAUSE OF ALANNA and I was all mixed feelings and ough. Alex told me about his feelings for Roger. And then he told me again and I told him NO and there are so many nice guys around and NO ALEX JUST NO. My family and Alex’ family got all into this team-Roger thing (without even knowing what Roger already did on his own to support his cause, you know, just in case the king died AND his son, sweating sicknesses can be so convenient, YOU DON’T KNOW EVEN).

 

I decided to have some fun. I could have a lot of fun. If I wanted to do forbidden things I just needed to make sure that no one expected such a behavior from me. You know, no one would believe that a young lady who had been mistress of the prince spend her evenings singing songs about the more physical aspects of love-making and making a good deal of this love to housemaids. So this was impossible and I could do it in plain sight. You know, the beloved cousin of the prince killing a good portion of the city’s population just because he wanted to get the throne was another thing that was so impossible that no one would believe it, even if you shouted the evidence at them. Have you ever been to a housemaids’ party? If they have free time they know damn well how to use it. You should go. Would recommend.

 

Alanna did two things that I liked at once. She revealed that she was a woman (technically that was revealed by Roger but still), and she killed that other option for the throne. Fine, I thought. Now I only had to think of a way to rekindle my relationship with Jon and things would be settled.

 

Ahahahahahahaha. No.

 

That Thom-guy decided to resurrect Roger to ASK HIM QUESTIONS ABOUT MAGIC (and blamed it on me because he was too ashamed when he remembered to think about his hero-sister Alanna for a moment) and everyone I had ever been close friends with went crazy about finally having Roger as king. The person who invented the sweating sickness! Our holy savior! Seriously. It was agreed upon that it would make a good impression on Roger if we went with Thom’s lie and told him that I convinced Thom to bring Roger back. Sadly I don’t quite believe that Roger swallowed that tale.

 

Everyone in Tirragen and Eldorne was so excited. About possibilities. I tried to talk to Roger. He told me nothing about his plans. Maybe he told Alex. If he did I really wonder why he supports him. To me, Roger looked very much like a man who wanted to return to his grave. Funny, I’ve never seen a man who wanted to return to his grave before, but I could spot one when I saw Roger. I tried to talk to him about all sorts of things that he would do when he was king. Before he died, he would tell me tales about his future glory when prompted like this. After his death, he told me nothing. As if he didn’t make any plans. As if he didn’t want to do anything after that glorious plan of his. As if there was no after.

 

YOU SEE WHY I’M SCARED?

 

I actually visited Thom to find out what kind of scrolls Roger was reading. Thom never thought about checking. He just chose to believe whatever Roger told him. When I took a look at those scrolls they were texts about how to summon a Gate of Idramm. When I asked Thom about it he said that the wind must have messed with them. That’s what denial looks like to me. I told him that he should tell his sister (because I couldn’t without becoming some type of weird double-agent), but he REFUSED. No, Roger wouldn’t do that! No, Roger isn’t killing me! No, he doesn’t have any magic! He said so!

 

So I had two options: Going with whatever Roger’s plans were and propably die (yay, so much fun!). Or betray all of my family, my best friend Alex and his family, two families that had not been exactly favoured during King Roald’s rule and that could potentially profit from a change of power dynamics (and propably getting hanged for high treason in the process, if you wanna stay real, just because someone admits a crime doesn’t mean there’s mercy).

 

Or I could try something else. Maybe, I thought, Roger would be happy enough if he got to be king before he could carry out his grand plan. Maybe that Josiane girl was still eager enough to become queen to agree to becoming Roger’s wife (I was out, thank you, but NO thank you). They would have had a son. And then we could get rid of Roger, having the succession to the throne thing more or less settled. But that plan turned out to be not successful. Not such a great miracle with everyone being so OBVIOUS about planning something since Roger’s been back from the dead.

 

Now I have exactly no options and too much very-post-puberty-passion for unimportant things in me to accept death. I’m positive that Alanna will get killed by Alex. And Jon will get killed by Roger. And I will be killed by someone.

 

So I try to distract myself as best as I can. There’s this warrior girl, Buri. She’s into Thayet who only has eyes for Jon these days. I think I’ll ask her out. There’s a chance she will say yes.

 

AND SO I ALMOST ENDED THIS ON YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE. FUCK I’M SCARED!

 

Delia of Eldorne


End file.
